Saturday, May 26, 2007

A moment of unintentional slapstick

Lord knows, I have no intention of turning this blog into one of those tedious tales of my everyday life thing. My everyday life bores me rigid and I have no intention with boring the rest of you with it. But I feel I must recount the following cautionary tale.

Passing one of the local offies with a bag of groceries this evening I decided to stop in to pick up a four pack. I had previously been well disposed to the place since the owner once asked me for proof of age, but tonight I saw another side to the place entirely. I found the fridge where the cans of beer were; it was one of those sliding door things. I pulled the door back and, because I was holding a shopping bag in my right hand used an elbow to wedge it open. Then I bent down to extract a four-pack of Becks with the left. As I did so, some slight movement of the elbow promoted the door to snap shut like a trap, bashing into my temple.

Braving this danger I managed to extract the Becks. To my horror I then found that it was was one can short. Despite the suspicion that this might be a trap I opened the door again and replaced the Becks. By now I was pretty determined: no infernal fridge was going to deny me my beer, so I opened the door again, wedged it open with my elbow and went for the Grolsch instead. Whereas I'd had to reach down for the Becks I had to reach up for this. But as my hand closed round the beer the same thing happened. The trap snapped shit and for a second time my head was nearly sliced open.

Still I had the beer and went to the till. Astonishingly the man behind the counter seemed unconcerned by the killer fridge he had in his shop, and instead began a cheery chat about the weather and such things. By now I was starting to see through him. I coldly took in his friendly chat, the charity tin for the Children of Iraq (like they ever have to worry about being decapitated by a beer fridge), his previous past 'oh you look so much younger than you are' shtick and I realised these were all a pose, designed to make people think he was a caring, friendly shop keeper rather than a black-hearted villain with Procrustean leanings.

As he handed over the change I smiled coldly. I had the measure of the scoundrel and my terrible revenge was now beginning. Pocketing all the dosh (ha! take that Children of Iraq and your fridges of terror) I walked home for the second part. Tomorrow I shall unleash the feared Health and Safety Executive on this man and free London for ever from this menace.